When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963

Live Cam from Texas School Book Depository Window

There's a live cam pointing out from Lee Harvey Oswald's viewpoint from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. 

And it's more than a little creepy.

Want Your Own Newspaper?

By George Phenix

If I were 20 years younger, I would launch an electronic newspaper under the noses of the downtown daily (the Austin American Statesman).  And I would whip their butts.

In Texas, it ain't bragging if it's true.  And I've already whipped the daily once before with a weekly newspaper (The Westlake Picayune).

This time, it might be even easier.  Only this time, it wouldn't be a newspaper -- it would be a blog.

Think about it.  Schools generate most of the news for community newspapers.

What the hell, every parent loves seeing a picture of their kid in the newspaper.  And with cell phones that take pictures, every soccer mom could post pictures of their kid on the community newspaper site.  Text to follow.

Ditto PTA meetings.  School board meetings.

No need for reporters as such.  Have the local participants post their stories themselves. Controversial?  No problem with "Pro" and "Con" columns.

And for the schools themselves, what a blessing this would be.  Post the calendar, homework assignments, parent conferences, field trips.  Tax rates, too.

Ask any old sports reporter and they'll tell you the toughest assignment they ever had was covering high school football.  No press box.   Poor lighting.  Cold.  Wet.  No problem.  All sports parents are fanatics.  They'll write the game stories and not whine about the conditions.  Eleven starters?  Eleven parents writing about their family's personal hero.  No problem because space is not a problem in the electronic world.

The community newspaper blog could be set up with more departments than the traditional daily ever thought of.  Stamp collectors could have their own section.  Genealogists, gerontologists, geologists (enough with the g-words,George)...special sections for special interests.  ALL special interests.

And the news would be posted 24/7.  A daily newspaper all day long!

Libel?  Well hell yes, libel is a problem.  But don't you have a cousin who is a lawyer?

Editors?  Admittedly, I haven't solved this one yet.  Even Rupert Murdoch has admonished editors to abandon their "God-like" relationship with their readers (amen), but some sort of filtration system is helpful.

Advertising?  Potentially, this is a bigger problem than libel.  Local merchants are slower to come  on board with ads in the new media.  Banners,streamers, pop-ups...they will be slow to convince.  But they will.

Well.  That's the outline.  Go flesh it out yourself.

The problem with many bloggers is that they don't think big enough.  Too many see themselves as Avenging Angels, independent Samurai, Lone Rangers.

Screw that.  Think big.  If you really want to rattle the Main Stream Media,start your own community newspaper/blog.  Just imagine if you create an entity which not only delivers the news but also gives the reader a seat at the table.  Exciting.

A word of caution.  In public opinion polls, journalists now rank below trial lawyers.  Bloggers must avoid God-like attitudes or they will suffer the same fate.   Ultimately. 

Another Good Review of When the News Went Live

The Flip Side

By Ken Judkins

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE LEWISVILLE LEADER, 11/20/2004

When the News Went Live

As the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination is upon us, it seems a good time to talk about one of the more engaging books I've come across in some time.

When the News Went Live, co-written by  Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise, tells the story of the most infamous era in Dallas history through the first-person eyes of four local journalists.

Bob Huffaker wrote the majority of the book, telling the story of that awful time in Dallas that began with the assault on UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in October 1963, through the trial of Jack Ruby in early 1964. Each of the other three authors contributed a chapter relating their own experiences at the time, while all four collaborated on the final chapter lamenting the state of broadcast journalism today.

Each of the four men has a fascinating tale to tell.

Huffaker was a reporter for KRLD and by extension CBS. He broadcast the motorcade and later scenes at Parkland Hospital as word was received that the president had died of his wounds.  Two days later he was holding the CBS microphone as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald a few feet in from of him.

George Phenix filmed scenes of the president's arrival at Love Field, then of the chaos around Parkland.  He was manning the CBS film camera standing next to Huffaker as Jack Ruby elbowed in beside him and then darted out and shot Oswald. 

Those of us who grew up in the metroplex all remember Bill Mercer as the voice of Saturday Night Wrestling. He has had a distinguished career as the voice of a number of local sports teams.  He broadcast a bizarre midnight news conference with Lee Harvey Oswald on the night of the assassination.  (It was determined later that Jack Ruby was in attendance.)

Wes Wise was a popular sportscaster in the area for years, and then served as an equally popular mayor of Dallas, in which capacity he helped save the School Book Depository from destruction.  He was accosted by Jack Ruby outside that infamous building the day before Ruby shot Oswald, and was waiting to cover the arrival of Oswald at the county jail.

When the News Went Live was the brainchild of Bob Huffaker, who left journalism decades ago for a career teaching English.  He told me his coverage of the assassination caused him to reflect on the nature of the profession, deciding he didn't want to spend the rest of his life "reporting on tragedy."  Though stated by none of the authors, I was struck by the fact that they were all very young when this event was thrust upon them.  It is obvious that being in that place at that time in their positions had a profound effect on each of their future lives.

The authors' accounts of the time literally bring the events up close and personal to the reader.  The book overlays the thoughts and feelings of each on top of the factual events and is unique to the genre.

None of the authors is sympathetic to conspiracy theorists.  They were hard-nosed journalists interested only in the facts, and they use them to tell an incredible story.

When the News Went Live paints a tragic portrait of Jack Ruby that is downright moving at times.  It is difficult to read this book without ultimately feeling sorry for the strange little man who was flabbergasted to find he was not treated as a hero after slaying the man he perceived as killing the nation's soul.  His high-profile attorney's exploitation of his plight and the subsequent downward spiral toward mental illness are tenderly portrayed.

I am always fascinated with the more obscure tidbits of history, and this book is full of them.  In one interesting side story, a week prior to Kennedy's visit George Phenix was covering a Dallas appearance by Alabama Governor George Wallace when he (Phenix) was physically attacked by General Edwin Walker, who, ironically and not known at the time, Oswald had tried to kill the previous April.  Huffaker relates stories about the resentment that sprang up in the local press toward the perceived arrogance and condescension among members of the national media who sometimes had no qualms about taking over their local offices.

The final chapter provides the authors' collective take on the state of journalism today.  None of the four is complimentary of the current trend toward sensationalism and the lack of in-depth investigation. When I asked Huffaker if he would consider a career in journalism were he starting out today, he stated, "I really don't think I would."

Had these four chosen different professions during their younger days, we would all be the poorer for it.

This is a first-class account of a tragic historical moment that still has an impact on our nation.

NCAA Football: Cheaper by the dozen

By Bill Mercer

What a thrill! The NCAA is about to add a twelfth game to the regular season for college football.  The  college organization afflicted with misoneism about a real playoff system is only a game or two away from all that a playoff entails. Most of you can't remember when it was a nine game college season. That is before the BIG money. And that is about the only reason for adding a twelfth game. Money. No one has produced a petition by the players for an additional game.

Folks are still discussing what was, or could have been, the most entertaining and exciting basketball playoff in history. Some of the little guys knocked off the big 'uns! In the end the two best in the nation probably played for the championship. But boy was it fun to have Vermont and Bucknell achieve their moment of glory.

So back to the other sport. The football folks have had all sorts of excuses for not having a playoff. Too many games for the student-athletes. So why add a twelfth? Another is that pouring first, second and wild card teams into a playoff creates ochlesis. Cute word isn't it?

Let's make it easy for them.

There are eleven major Division One-A conferences. Oh did we forget to mention that all the other divisions in football have a playoff? When North Texas was in the Southland Conference in 1-AA, the Eagles played one in the snow, ice and rain in Nevada. Lot of fun.

Once again, there are eleven 1-A, big-time money conferences. So take the champions of each of those conferences (toss in the top Independent to make it even) and have a four round playoff. What you would have is about a fifteen-sixteen game season for the champion. Sixteen was the number of games at Westlake High, down by Austin, played and I broadcast in 1994 in the state high school playoff.  And like the college players those kids weren't paid. And no one yelled about lack of academic success. Besides the colleges for the most part would have finished the academic year. And unlike the bowl games, the athletes wouldn't have all that time to wait around for a game.

By just having the conference champions then the BIG 'UNs would still keep all the money. That's what really drives the current infandous situation. All those bowl games? I guess some like the Potty-Port in Dumpster, Michigan would go out of business but others could continue to have their little social-invited-teams that don't mean a thing now. When was the last time the winner of a bowl game played the winner of the other bowl game next week? For the right to...oh you get the drift.

This is not a brand new idea...we in the broadcast business have been kicking this big rock around for fifty years. Maybe in another fifty?

From hot type to hot heads...or as the news morphs

By George Phenix

It should come as no surprise that I'm a hot-type kinda guy. Heritage being what it is. I still remember the scars on the hands and wrists of the Linotype operators at the newspapers. As they would pound out a line of type, hot lead would splash from the well on the sides of their machines.

Those guys (interestingly, most were men. I wonder how they got men to take typing classes back in the early days?) anyway, those guys were experts at reading text upside-down and backwards as they literally hammered the rows of metal sentences into a rectangle the size of a newspaper page called a pig, for some reason that escapes me.

I learned how to read upside-down and backwards, too. Gave me a secret weapon back when I was a city hall reporter. I could read letters that weren't pointed my way.

Where am I headed with all this?

First, one more digression. I read somewhere that the day President Kennedy was assassinated, the Ft. Worth Star Telegram put out seven special editions and people were lined up outside the building anxiously waiting to buy each ssue as it came hot off the press.

My point (finally) is that the way people get their news has been morphing
all my life. Yours too?

Yep, the telegraph put the Pony Express out of business. And things have
been changing ever since.

In 1963, most people didn't believe it until they read it in their local
newspaper. (I know, I know...today, people don't believe their local
newspaper, their local TV...nuthin. And that's not all bad.)

But, when the president was murdered, the nation and the world hungered for more and more information. Was it the Communists? The Mob? Who would do such a thing? And who the hell was this shrimp Lee Harvey Oswald?

Television came into its own.

Today, we've morphed from gawd-awful talking heads on cable news to a nation mainlining news from the Internet. Info anarchy to some. Freedom for others.

Just this week I learned something from Boing Boing, with their nod to Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog. 

Here's Chris' stats on the meltdown of mainstream media:

• Music: sales last year were down 21% from their peak in 1999
• Television: network TV's audience share has fallen by a third since 1985
• Radio: listenership is at a 27-year low
• Newspapers: circulation peaked in 1987, and the decline is accelerating
• Magazines: total circulation peaked in 2000 and is now back to 1994 levels (but a few premier titles are bucking the trend
• Books: sales growth is lagging the economy as whole

And, as you might expect, there's growth on the other side of the ledger, as
Anderson writes:

Up:

• Movies: 2004 was another record year, both for theaters and DVDs
• Videogames: even in the last year of this generation of consoles,sales hit a new record
• Web: online ads will grow 30% this year, breaking $10 billion (5.4% ofall advertising)

Whatever the outcome, transitions are part of the fabric of this nation.
Nobody know the final outcome, but, lordy, it's fun keeping score.

Nice Review of When the News Went Live

Four journalists recount the dark days in Dallas that changed news

By Felix Gillette

PUBLISHED JANUARY 16, 2005 IN THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN

As a 24-year-old cub reporter, George Phenix filmed one of the iconic images of American history: Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. At the time, Phenix was working for KRLD, a CBS radio and television affiliate. That afternoon, his film was broadcast nationally. Millions of Americans watched the scene of Oswald crumpling. Behind the camera, Phenix's cub status also was taking a hit.

Along with three of his then-colleagues at KRLD -- Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer and Wes Wise -- Phenix has recently published a memoir of the Kennedy assassination, "When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963." In it, Phenix recounts how a few weeks after the shooting, he snuck into the station and developed a roll of the film as a souvenir. His two toddlers quickly got their hands on the keepsake. "They imagined it to be some sort of new kind of yo-yo," writes Phenix, "and repeatedly rolled it up and down the hallway -- ruined it."

When Phenix sat down 40 years later to set his experiences to paper, he realized that grim memories die harder than old rolls of film. He didn't need any visual cues to recall the details. "I wrote it in one pass," says Phenix during a recent telephone interview. "I was surprised. It had been indelibly burned into me. It's just kind of part of (my) DNA."

During the course of the book, each author recounts his role covering John F. Kennedy's assassination. Wise, who was attending a luncheon in Kennedy's honor in downtown Dallas, remembers the reactions of the people around him when the news first broke. "A young man stood facing a wall, propping his left arm against it and burying his head in his forearm, sobbing uncontrollably," writes Wise. "In bizarre contrast, to my shock and dismay, a man at our table continued to stuff a steak into his mouth."

For the four young reporters, there wasn't much time to eat. Or sleep. Or grieve. Within minutes, they were broadcasting the unfolding events. In the coming weeks and months, Huffaker interviewed Oswald's mother, Mercer covered Oswald's midnight news conference, Phenix filmed Oswald's murder and Wise testified at Ruby's trial. "If we weren't professionals before the assassination," writes Mercer, "we certainly achieved that status in the aftermath."

Each of the authors went on to distinguished careers. Huffaker became an English professor at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos and an editor at Texas Monthly. Mercer broadcast games for the Dallas Cowboys, the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox. Wise wrote for Sports Illustrated and served as mayor of Dallas for five years in the '70s. Phenix, who lives in Austin, co-founded the Texas Weekly and was editor of the Westlake Picayune.

"The interesting thing is that our tools were so primitive in those days," recalls Phenix. "There were no cell phones, no faxes, no e-mail."

And no second gunman lurking on the grassy knoll. From the get-go, the authors declare themselves "weary of conspiracy theories." Throughout, they avoid any rote speculation about Oswald's motivations. There are no flights of fancy buzzing through the murky backrooms of Cuban apparatchiks or Mafia hit men. Instead, the narrative remains grounded in the streets of Dallas. It's a sobering antidote to the staggering paranoia of, say, Oliver Stone's "JFK." In pithy, laconic prose the authors lay out the who, what, when and where of the heart-rending events. The bloody parade. The search for Oswald. Ruby's mental unraveling at the subsequent trials.

To this familiar set of episodes and characters, the four men sprinkle in personal details based on what they reported -- and what they didn't report. Wise recounts how, on the day following Kennedy's assassination, he bumped into a disgruntled Ruby outside the Texas School Book Depository. Like all Dallas broadcasters, Wise knew Ruby, whom he describes as "the ultimate news reporter groupie of his day." After a brief discussion, Wise brushed him off. "Reflecting on that conversation, I have wondered whether Ruby was hoping that I might do a radio interview with him," writes Wise. "Such a thing would have been a historic part of that sad weekend's coverage."

Throughout "When the News Went Live," the authors advance the less-than-radical theory that the assassination was a turning point not only for world history but also for broadcast journalism. They argue that the round-the-clock coverage of the assassination changed television news, paving the way for such future cable-TV obsessions as O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson.

It's a bittersweet legacy. Phenix says that today's cable news networks have taken something of value and ruined it, like a bunch of youngsters playing yo-yo with a precious roll of film. "For me, the question is: Has TV news helped make America smarter? Or dumber?" writes Phenix. "I vote for the latter."

Austin journalist Felix Gillette writes frequently for slate.com.

Bless the Bloggers

By Bob Huffaker

So now vigilant blogs have uncovered the GOP source of the GOP Schiavo memo that GOP spinners tried to blame on the Vast Anti-GOP Conspiracy.

After their questioning CBS documents about the Texas Air National Guard's pampering the young Bush, it's good to see them on the case.

Keep being equal-opportunity iconoclasts, bloggers. You might save freedom of speech yet.

Confessions of a Conspirator

By Bob Huffaker

OK, I'm part of the JFK assassination cover-up.  I admit it.

 

Keeping the secret all these years hasn't been easy, what with those constant visits from the mob, Vladimir Putin, that diehard Fidel Castro, and LBJ's ghost.  So now the truth is out at last, and I feel marvelous just having gotten it off my chest.

 

Some bloggists are criticizing When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963 for ignoring the obvious horrible truth behind who really shot JFK. One fellow suggests that all four of us reporters somehow saved ourselves from certain death by keeping quiet for all these years about what we knew. He even hints darkly that each of us somehow advanced his career by joining the cover-up: Bill as famous play-by-play announcer, George as publisher of Texas Weekly, Wes as Dallas Mayor, and I as a Texas Monthly editor. That's one of the funniest things we ever heard, and it still has us laughing.

 

Most conspiracy criticism has come from decent folks who are properly skeptical of an establishment that has damn well earned all the skepticism it gets. Some of them report that they enjoyed reading the book even if they wish that we had dealt with the proliferation of conspiracy theories.

 

That would have been a different book. We dealt instead with things we know firsthand and those we have investigated.

The physical evidence of the murders of Kennedy, Tippit, and Oswald is incontrovertible, complete with complete and consistent witness accounts of Oswald's and Ruby's movements, ballistics, photographic and autopsy evidence.

Having covered these three murders four decades ago, I went back into Warren Commission testimony, police reports, FBI reports, and other reliable evidence for a year of research while writing the book.  Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, is a  consultant to assassination books, articles and documentaries.  His theory prompted the  House Select Committee to examine police audio in its 1970s investigations.  He is a wise skeptic who has had his own conspiracy theories and has devoted his whole professional life to studying the case.  He was kind enough to fact-check the book, and he helped us avoid mistakes that we might have made without his expertise. Gary convinced me of some facts, and I convinced him of some.

All the best research confirms that Oswald acted alone in the murder of JFK and Tippit, and that Ruby was too flaky and too wired to have kept secrets.  The controversy over the physical evidence is a shame, since it detracts from the real questions that remain, such as the documented cover-up by the FBI and Oswald's associations with people who might have influenced or encouraged him to kill JFK.

We all agree that Oswald and Ruby both acted alone and independently, but none of us would ever claim that others might not have influenced Oswald, especially given the FBI's concealing their knowledge of the assassin and the CIA's shadowy presence. On CBS-TV the morning after the assassination, my first question to Chief Jesse Curry confirmed FBI surveillance of the suspect.

But Ruby was a police and media groupie, and nobody in his right mind would have chosen him as a conspirator--and certainly not as a hit man. I talked to Ruby enough to know that much myself, and his roommate George Senator had no secrets either.  He was just a bartender who shared Ruby's apartment and might or might not have had a physical relationship with him--not that there's anything wrong with that.

But don't get me started.

 

I invite all conspiracy-minded folks to read When the News Went Live, give us your best shot, and let us know if you enjoyed the book.

Re: Tom Delay's mounting troubles

By George Phenix

After nearly forty years in press and politics, I've conjured a life theory
which helps makes sense of the nonsense:

Republicans screw themselves out of office because they don't understand
power.

Democrats screw themselves out of office because they don't understand sex.

There. I feel better now.

When the News Goes Dark

According to Merrill Brown in the Carnegie Reporter, our audience is "abandoning the news as we've known it, with a great number of them never to return to daily newspapers and national broadcast news programs."  Young news consumers, he writes, say that the Internet is clearly ahead of most other media, providing  only the wanted news,  only when wanted.

Brown quotes, among many sources,  a journalist/blogger: "Young people are more curious than ever but define news on their own terms," says Jeff Jarvis, who is president of Advance.net, a unit of Advance Publications, and who publishes a widely read blog, Buzzmachine.com. "They get news where they want it, when they want it. Media is about control now. We used to wait for the news to come to us. Now news waits for us to come to it. That's their expectation. We get news on cable and on the Internet any time, any place."

This article is a must-read for everyone in the news industry should we want to keep the news from going dark.